"A Ghost Head is a type of Cybernetic Allen Key which a Fake Thomas Jefferson uses to Impeach The Goddamn President. Used mostly when a writer is Combing His Hair or Speaking Fluent Cat, although if a character is Shirtless And Hungry it can be used to give them a Fire Island Swirlie. See also The Alien Is Not An Alien and Germany Fits In My Pocket."

"A Ghost Head is a type of Cybernetic Allen Key which a Fake Thomas Jefferson uses to Impeach The Goddamn President. Used mostly when a writer is Combing His Hair or Speaking Fluent Cat, although if a character is Shirtless And Hungry it can be used to give them a Fire Island Swirlie. See also The Alien Is Not An Alien and Germany Fits In My Pocket."

Cornflakes_91 wrote:there could be a new form of in-system drive: the string surfer.
you latch onto a string that goes through a system and travel very fast along it, but only from one wormhole to another wormhole which must both be caused by the same string
a railway of sorts between wormholes in a system
(this paths could and should do some curving through the system, following the spline which the string forms)

Looks like tweaking Josh's New Solution™ to create this would be easy peasy.

"A Ghost Head is a type of Cybernetic Allen Key which a Fake Thomas Jefferson uses to Impeach The Goddamn President. Used mostly when a writer is Combing His Hair or Speaking Fluent Cat, although if a character is Shirtless And Hungry it can be used to give them a Fire Island Swirlie. See also The Alien Is Not An Alien and Germany Fits In My Pocket."

what if jumpgates would also serve as traffic control for the wormholes they maintain?

A radial wedge method could be used for allocation of flight vectors for entering and departing wormholes.

A neat feat would then be if the position on entry of the wormhole determines the position on exit (i go in on the "upper" edge, i depart from the upper edge).

That way 2 jumpgates could coordinate on the ends of a wormhole and make not only a higher capacity (from a wormhole charge perspective) but also safer and more organised wormhole connection.
Making it more efficient for large amounts of traffic.

in contrast a wild jumphole would have no traffic control and as such be much more dangeeous to use, as it gets much likelier to collide with another ship or to have to evade arriving ships.

Actually, traffic control in general would be nice to have.
For example defined approach vectors from a warp rail to a stations docks.

On another general jumpgate notion:
Im wondering what should be more energy efficient to maintain, a single large wormhole or multiple smaller ones?

When multiple smaller wormholes would be more efficient i reckon that jumpgates would not be a single monolith generating a single wormhole, but a station (or multiple stations) generating a bunch of smaller wormholes for small, everyday traffic and increase the size of one of these when a ship comes thats too big for the small holes.

I imagine a big, star-shaped station with a big hole in the middle.
generating wormholes from every spike, and small ships swarm around, flying to the spikes.
And when a big ship comes the hole in the middle comes alive and generates a big wormhole for it to pass, generating a sense of awe, telling you that something big is happening.

Gazz wrote:
Modification of the "straight charging by a ship" mechanic:

The wormhole is always open if the current charge is above the "working" level.
Any ship can pass without special equipment. No other conditions. KISS.

Trouble starts when a ship passes.
Depending on the ship's mass, the WH charge is depleted.
If the current charge drops below the working level, the WH starts to collapse.
This takes maybe a minute during which still any ship can pass.

A ship outfitted with a WH charger cannot directly charge the WH (preserving the strategic issue) but it can delay the collapse by a few minutes so a sizable fleet can pass reliably.
However, every transferred ship counts and such a transit drops the WH deep in the red, energy-wise...

If a WH is ever depleted below the working level, it recharges on it's own time, making some WH clearly more valuable than others.

so, why didnt i like that idea back then when it was new?

so, what gazz wrote +

maybe wormhole stabilisers can increase the maximum charge of an already existing wormhole?

so a jumpgate built on top of an already existing wormhole can increase the maximum size of ship that can pass through without destabilising the wormhole
(assuming a permanent self recharge as long as the WH is stable)
so a gate reinforced wormhole can manage bigger bursts of ship transfer without closing.

the total tonnage over time (without collapsed states in between, maximum sustained rate) doesnt change
but the maximum burst size increases, creating less downtime when something big gets through.

when the wormhole charges over its natural charge level the emissions of that wormhole increase strongly, proportional to the "overcharge" in it.
so you can detect when someone prepares a wormhole for a big burst entry

wormhole creating mechanisms could have 2 forms:

they only create "collapsing" wormholes.
they get created and immediately start collapsing, giving you a small time window to use the connection until the connection closes again.
(maybe only seconds for "minimal" wormhole generators)

they create "semi stable" wormholes
wormholes with minimal charge (1 maximal charge) get created and can be kept stable for a long time (indefinitely?) as long as the required stabilisation is present
it starts collapsing when the first ship passes, from there it goes through a normal collapse and vanishes afterwards

we could maybe allow to combine semi stable wormholes with overcharging wormholes to create expensively maintained artificial wormhole connections that collapse the second the maintaining constructs are disabled.

some new ideas on how to create wormholes:

you have to map the position beforehand
you fly there, "attach" your wormhole generator to the position and can create a wormhole to the location
this attachment should be measurable at the attahed location, so you can know beforehand where a ship could appear
an used attachment is not reusable, you have to fly there again to open another wormhole
maybe the attachment even locates the attached object/wormhole generator, as a countermeasure to jumpdrive ships

you can attach 2 wormhole generators to each other
you bring both wormhole generators near each other and attach them to each other
they can now create a single wormhole between their locations, when that connection collapses they have to reattach to each other again.
maybe allow to transfer this attachment from one generator to another, or from a smaller object to the generator (because it would be a pain in the ass to move your whole jumpgate assembly if the connection fails for whatever reason. this could maybe used as a feature, though, "jumpgate ammunition")

big maybe allow attachement from a remote location (another system) but this creates a specific signature
at first it creates a very faint bubble of signal through the whole system, this bubble contracts over the couse of a few minutes towards the center of if, the soon to be attached location
so you may jump to a previously non-attached position, but everyone in the system is able to tell that you plan to do so a while beforehand.
(maybe even over interstellar distances, so you can tell when someone the next system over jumps in that way)

a small thing that bugs me on gazz idea:
any wormhole can accomodate any size of ship when its collapsing.

capital ships should require some kind of infrastructure to travel everywhere

maybe collapsing wormholes have a big, but limited, maximum transfer size which is quite a bit larger then the stable transfer capacity?

so some natural wormholes are not able to accomodate a capital ship unaided and are thus less strategically valuable.

this also extends to jumpdrives, not every wormhole generator can accomodate a capital ship.

its also using one of the older concepts in this thread: unidirectional wormholes.

what would be if jumpdrives could create wormholes at arbitary locations but the connection is unidirectional.Towards the jumpdrive ship

a jumpdrive equipped ship would never be able to travel through its own wormhole, but it could pull ships towards itself from arbitary locations within its effective range.

For a bidirectional link, wormhole modules would be required on both ends.
Both pulling ships towards their end.

It would have the same effect as the orphan wormhole mechanic, except that it doesnt need the (at least in my opinion) unelegant disfunctional wormholes.
As to get ships to some location by jumpdrive, a jumpdrive capable ship has to be there first to create the connection.

it would also make for a generally very powerful escape mechanic, shifting the balance towards retreat on the "battles end by destruction or retreat" scale, making for more interesting strategic and role-play.
Because: which good story with fights has only one big cataclysmic fight which ends the plot?
Much better stories with battle, retreat, flee, rebuild, etc

Not sure if that idea is any good, just wanted to get it out of my head

what if solar systems had significant relative velocities and wormholes conserve that relative velocity on transit?
when you go through a wormhole between two systems with high relative velocity you get shot through the target system at the corresponding vector

dangerous (-ly low charge) wormholes would randomise the exit vector by some factor
which would make dangerous wormholes a player skill barrier instead of some dice roll.
when you manage to avoid the obstacles on the other side you made a successful transit through a dangerous wormhole

jumpgates could have a variable capacity to absorb some impulse of incoming objects, giving them a maximum safe transit mass up to which they can absorb all impulse from the relative velocity
(which would give jumpgates a factor at which they can be reseached indefinitely without breaking any mechanics, assuming mass of spaceships also increases with additional research (to balance out increasing thrust and mining rates ))

That's an interesting thought Cornflakes. Since wormholes are likely going to have load screens, would it just put the player into a small room where the encounter occurs? Then after it's evaded the player resumes travel to the connected system.